Break of Dawn
by muggleborn.dragon.ryder
Summary: Aster is a simple twenty year old guy, living across the street from the single mother, lonely little Ms. Bennett. That changes when she adopts Jack Frost, the teenage misfit who Aster suddenly finds himself stuck with for three weeks. Rated T for some heavy stuff.
1. Chapter 1

_**Break of Dawn**_

**A/N: Why am I starting all these new stories? DX Welll in my defense, this one has been on my mind for a LONG while and I was playing RotG in the background trying to get crap done...this was born. Although it did occur me at what felt like the break of dawn one morning, hence the title. I don't really know what time it was. **

* * *

It was Aster's favorite kind of day.

Nearly spring, a touch of summer in the air, a kiss of winter lingering with every cool breeze. The wind ruffled the pages of his paperback novel, and the young man stretched a bit, smiling as he read the words he had already read one time too many. Everyone had a favorite book, and this one was Aster's.

His afternoon would have continued in this relaxed fashion if not for Ms. Bennett.

The quiet, single mother across the street had once been almost like the parent that the orphaned boy had never had. Sympathy for many ran thick in her veins, and Aster remembered now why her visits were more often brought over to his house. He cut his gaze to the house across the street, inwardly seething upon seeing that boy, her adoptive child.

And the question that remained in his mind was why? Why would anybody choose to adopt somebody as irksome as Jack Frost, somebody as immature, somebody as irresponsible? When Aster was that kid's age, he wouldn't have gotten away with half the stuff that Jack had gotten away with in the orphanage. The boy was leaning against the porch railing, a faraway look in his eyes as he stared out at the neighborhood, but Aster knew that there was no way that boy's thoughts ran any deeper than the puddles of rainwater on the ground.

He heard Ms. Bennett clear her throat, and he turned his attention to the beautiful woman. She was playing with her hands, smoothing out a wrinkle in her purple shirt, looking uncertain as to whether or not she ought to even say anything. "Aster…I need to ask you a favor."

Aster raised an eyebrow, tearing his gaze away from Jack. "A favor, huh?" He forced a smile for her. Although he didn't understand exactly why she'd chosen to adopt somebody like Jack, she was still close to him. "Sure, I'll do you a favor." The twenty-year-old ran a hand through his ashy blonde hair, tilting his head questioningly at her.

"Well…you know about my business trip in a few days up to Chicago?"

Aster nodded, his hand freezing where it was within his blonde strands. Of course he knew about the business trip.

"Well, the problem is…Jack will be here alone for three weeks." Ms. Bennett explained carefully, her hand sliding down to her skirt, smoothing it out nervously. "And I really have no doubt that he can take care of himself, but…if you wouldn't mind…"

"You want me to babysit the kid?" Aster asked flatly, all trace of a smile gone.

"If you wouldn't mind looking after him for a little while we're gone, that would be great."

Aster ran a hand over his face and sighed softly.

"I mean, he's used to being alone." Ms. Bennett added softly, her eyes turning a bit darker and softer as her gaze traveled over to her adoptive child. "And he can certainly take care of himself, I know that, but…I only adopted him last month. I don't want…I don't want anything bad to happen. He doesn't care about being alone, but it's the little things." she sighed and closed her eyes, and for a second Aster could see every tired line on her face and he suddenly understood how hard things had been for her in the past year. He could still see little Jamie and Sophie in his mind's eye. He still remembered the nights that the candles had burned in the windows of the house across the street all night long, for days on end. Aster had thought his own pain for the two would never cease either.

Aster ran his hand through his hair again, his signature gesture whenever he was distressed or frustrated. "Alright."

Ms. Bennett opened her eyes. Despite how much she sometimes felt like she could count on Aster, there were other times when it felt like everything was falling through. "Alright?"

"I'll look after the kid." Aster conceded quietly. "I'll make sure he's, you know. Alright. I'll make sure he's doing okay. I'll make sure he's not alone."

"Thank you, Aster." Ms. Bennett smiled, enveloping him in a warm embrace.

As usual whenever somebody hugged him, Aster hesitated for a split second before hugging them back. He couldn't remember the last time a person besides Ms. Bennett – or even Ms. Bennett – had hugged him. He didn't receive physical affection very often, especially when you considered that he lived alone. He put his arms slowly around the woman, patting her soothingly on the back. "No need to thank me, Sheila. After all you've done for me, it's something I owe to you."

She pulled away and smiled at him, her hair tangling in her long brown curls. "It's only for three weeks."

"I know."

"I'm only making sure you know."

"You mentioned it three times in that sentence."

"Have I?"

"Yes."

"Sorry."

"It's alright."

* * *

Aster was technically awake. It was just that he was dozing a bit over his morning coffee when the doorbell rang and it startled him so much that he was instantly startled awake again. Letting out a string of profanities and jumping up from the table, he raced for the door, latched onto the knob and yanked. There was no worse way to start his morning, he decided, than to open up the door and find Jack Frost staring at him, one hand clutching his backpack. The fingers on the other hand were nervously drumming on the doorframe and he was staring around at the house with an open, bright curiosity. The sparkle in his bright blue eyes made him look both younger and, at the same time, older than he really was.

"Ms. Bennett told me to come here after school instead of to our house." he explained, brushing the hair out of his eyes. It was so bright it was almost white, Aster noted. And somehow this made the teenager seem even more annoying. "I'm hoping I'm welcome." the boy added, with a shadow of a smirk beginning to cross his face.

"Come in." Aster's tone could easily have been used for the sentence, 'go eat nails'. He tried to sound more hospitable. Clearing his throat, he repeated, "Come in. It's…uh…it's just for three weeks, right?"

"Yep." Jack nodded slowly, stepping in the door as Aster edged out of the way.

The twenty-year-old reached over and closed the door behind the boy, who was now looking around at the inside with that same curiosity that made him seem almost tolerable. "This is a nice place." Jack told him, but he was clutching his backpack like he expected the shadows to jump out at him and grab him.

"Thank you." Aster found it slightly easier than he expected to carry on a conversation with the boy. "I've got several rooms upstairs that I don't use, so…whichever one you like, you can pick that one." Had he ever spoken to the boy before? he wondered to himself, but quickly shook off the question.

"Um…" Jack hesitated, looking awkwardly about himself at the living room. "Thank you…?" The question mark at the end of his words was both amusing and a bit unsettling. Aster had half-expected the teenager to stroll in here and make himself at home, but the white-haired boy seemed so awkward and out-of-place that he felt a sudden urge to make him feel welcome. The problem was, Aster had no idea how to do that. He had never had to deal with children, even teenagers, before. Not when he was older than them, or had to look after them anyway. "You're welcome," he said gruffly. "Why don't you go ahead and pick one out?"

"Oh! Alright." Jack seemed glad of an excuse to get away, because he walked up the stairs fairly quickly, but his eyes were still wide. He was still taking it all in. Aster watched the white-haired boy walk slowly up the staircase, out of sight, onto the landing.

When Jack arrived at the top of the stairs and peeked into the first room, what he saw took his breath away. Even though he had lived in this neighborhood for a month, he still wasn't used to nice houses with two stories and caring people. But it wasn't that that caused him to stop. It was the mural painted on the wall, the beautiful spring day, with the grass shining from early morning dew, the sky a brilliant cerulean color.

"Aster!" he dashed back out to landing, feeling a wide grin breaking out over his face. "Aster, come here!"

And this sent the twenty-year-old into something of a fright. For God's sake, the kid had only been in his house for two minutes and he'd gotten hurt? He knew he shouldn't have left him alone…

Trying to imagine the look on Ms. Bennett's face, he arrived, panting, at the top of the stairs, looking around for the boy concernedly. But the boy was nowhere to be found, his voice still issuing from one of the rooms.

"Aster, come look!"

Aster peeked into the nearest room and felt an unfamiliar smile tugging at his lips, a kind of smile he hadn't given in a long time. "What's up, kid?"

"Did you paint this?" Jack was running his fingers along the wall, his blue eyes wide with wonder. "This is so cool!"

Aster nodded uncertainly, coming to stand by Jack. "You like it?"

Jack couldn't stop the grin spreading over his face. "This is really cool!"

"You like spring, then?" Aster gestured to the blue sky and the bright green grass.

Jack shrugged. "Prefer winter, really. But this…" and he took to touching the mural carefully again, as if thinking the paint was still wet, but after a few minutes, his fingers relaxed, his smile growing wider. "This is so…" he trailed off, his eyes sparkling.

Aster smiled a little, silently touched by the boy's enthusiasm. "Thank you."

Jack finally tore his eyes away from the mural, but the smile on his face didn't fade.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Break of Dawn**_

**A/N: Okay. Now, I know it's short, buuuuuut please enjoy it anyway. It was honestly like pulling teeth to write parts of this, I just could not figure out how I wanted to start this. Now. I can't wait until Jack gets to have more angst, that was so much fun XD Also, I'm listening to Winter Breath by Adrian Von Ziegler as I write this. Is that strangely appropriate or what? **

* * *

Aster normally woke early. It was true he often needed a cup or two – or sometimes, depending on the hour, a whole pot – of coffee to keep himself from dozing, but when the first few rays of morning sun spread their light through the windows, he often rose from the bed then.

This time, as the sunlight poured through the dusty glass of his old house he could hear somebody pacing the floor above him, causing the old floor to creak. He pushed back his covers and sat on the edge, staring up sleepily and rather uncomprehendingly at the ceiling for a minute or two before he remembered Ms. Bennett's business trip, and what it meant for him.

Sighing, he rose from the bed. With all that racket above his head, he wasn't going to get much sleep anyway.

He walked into the kitchen some fifteen minutes later, having showered and dressed in that time and began to put on his morning pot of coffee. When the sounds from the kitchen were met with footsteps on the stairs, he peered around the sunny yellow wall to see the white-haired teenager descending the steps, fully dressed, his backpack slung over his shoulder. He barely seemed to notice Aster standing there as he headed for the front door.

"Morning," Aster said lightly, pouring the coffee grounds into the maker.

"G'morning." Or it could have been something else. The exhausted mumble from the barely-listening boy left a lot of room for the imagination.

"I know that Regina normally drives you to school," Aster said. "But do you want me to—

"Nothankyou." Was that what he'd said, or was it something else? Again, it was such a mumble that the twenty-year-old could barely hear it.

But before Aster could say anything else – not that he would have – or asked Jack what he'd said – not that he'd do that, either – the boy unlatched the door, pushed it open and disappeared from the house.

* * *

When he had originally come here, Jack told himself that things would be different at this school than they had been at any other. He was turning over a new leaf. He was a troublemaker no more. He wasn't going to out-and-out try to get anyone's attention – that would mean being the first to reach out and that was something he wasn't a fan of – or that would mean extra work, something he definitely wasn't a fan of. So, all in all, he'd decided that things at this new school wouldn't be half-bad if he just tried to skate by.

And then the records from his last school showed up, and with it came all the old nicknames, the cold looks from teachers or, sometimes, if that particular teacher was sympathetic, it was simply a raised eyebrow.

If he closed his eyes, he could still see the words, printed in black-and-white, that changed people's minds about him instantly.

"_Jack has a tendency to cause trouble, disrupt class, get in fights—_

He hitched his backpack a little higher on his shoulders, fighting the yawn that threatened. It wasn't a surprise that he hadn't been able to sleep last night. He should have known it, considering that it was his house…wait, what was his name again? Aster? No, Aster didn't seem to like him very much, either. But unlike the people at school, Aster didn't even seem to have a real reason. Jack shifted his backpack again, feeling a shoulder slam suddenly into his.

"Hey, albino," the kid called over his shoulder as he walked away, earning a curious look or two from the other students.

Jack rolled his eyes, running his fingers through his hair. It was a little thing he did when he felt distressed or frustrated. Really, why would anybody bother to taunt him about anything else when clearly his deathly pale skin and nearly white hair already sufficed well enough? His blue eyes seemed to be the only natural splash of color he'd had, and he often never made eye contact with people anyway, so it's not like it mattered. When he arrived in his first class, he slowly let his backpack drop as he took his seat at his desk in the back of the room. There were people in the desks beside him, but as usual whenever the occupants arrived, they gave him a look of disgust and scooted their chairs away from him.

Not that he minded. At least now he could focus on something else than them. He pulled a pencil and a composition notebook out of his backpack, opened the notebook up, and began doodling. When he'd first come here, he'd honestly tried to pay attention to the teachers, and take notes and do well in his classes. New leaf, new leaf, new leaf, he'd tell himself every time the teacher's eyes flicked over to him, every time they asked him a question.

But by now, he had given up. He'd only been here a month and already they judged him, they thought they knew him. Why should he bother trying to prove he was different than what they automatically assumed? He could see the words on the form still.

"_We highly suggest Jack get psychological help for all of his—_

He tightened his grip on the pencil, his lines suddenly becoming harder, thicker, sharper. He could faintly hear the teacher's voice in his ears, but he closed his eyes, ignoring it, just like he did in every other class. It didn't matter what he did, they were all going to judge him anyway. They were all going to make him see that stupid school guidance counselor and suggest therapy to Ms. Bennett whenever they could, and tell her constantly about all the trouble he seemed to be having. And one day, he knew, one day…

It might not be next week, it might not be next month, it might not even be until next year, but one day, Ms. Bennett would get tired of him and she would give him up, too. Just like they always did.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Hi, guys! I don't really like this chapter that much, but whatever. I'm too tired to keep dealing with it. I hope you guys like. Also I feel like its ending was just... ugh xP it's like so stupid. **

* * *

Although Aster loved to paint, this was not what he did for a living. He worked at the bottle toss counter in the low-profile, mostly unpopular carnival, the Warren. By a stroke of luck, he had been looking for a job while they looked for a steady and dependable worker to hand out stuffed animals to the occasional winner and to console the losers while letting them know the game was _not_ rigged.

You couldn't say Aster enjoyed his job, really, but the paycheck was steady and the work wasn't terrible, just tedious. Besides, he found he liked it whenever some kid actually won and their eyes lit up with joy. He didn't interact often with his coworkers, speaking to them only when he had absolutely had to. What could he say? He was a quiet kind of guy.

He ran his fingers through his hair, perching on a stool behind the counter. The place was so empty today, he wondered why they even bothered opening this early. The carnival was more a hangout place for teens more than anything, and, seeing as school was still in session, it's not like they had many customers first thing in the morning.

He let his eyes rove over the carnival, a few motionless people manning the roller coasters, although of course, nobody was on them quite yet. About four or five o' clock was when their rush hour would start, and about the time Aster's shift ended. He hoped he'd be there when Jack came home from school. The whole point of Ms. Bennett entrusting her adopted son to him was so that the teen wouldn't have to be alone. He knew the kid could probably handle an empty house for fifteen minutes or so, but the thought of a kid he barely knew wandering through his house made him feel oddly uneasy.

The uneasiness passed the moment he remembered Jack's sparkling blue eyes, his fingers gliding hesitantly over the spring mural on the wall. Aster closed his eyes, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair again. Innocent-looking or not, he thought these three weeks were going to be some pretty long ones.

* * *

When he got home, the house was empty and dark, the front door bolted, but when he checked, Jack was in the bedroom he had chosen, a notebook in front of him, a pencil in his hand as he considered.

"You doing homework?" Aster shouldn't have been so surprised; the kid was still in high school, right?

Jack shook his head absently, scribbling something down on the notebook. It looked to Aster more like a strange collection of symbols, and he wondered if that was supposed to pass for Jack's printing.

And then Jack seemed to come back to earth with a sudden jolt. He shrugged, not really looking at Aster. "Well, I don't see the point in doing homework, honestly."

Aster instantly went into adult mode. Hey, maybe he was only twenty, but he did have maturity. Probably more than most twenty-year-olds did, considering the number of foster homes he lived in. "Homework is essential," he began, "because I—

"Don't start," Jack cut in. "Please. I don't think you even know what you're saying. I'm pretty sure high school is a lot different now from when you were in it."

A bit stung that he wasn't being taken seriously and also by the crack at his age, Aster decided to defend what he could. "Didn't your parents teach you to respect your elders?" He folded his arms, but the humor in Jack's eyes faded instantly and suddenly he looked very far away.

A frown tugged at his pale lips as he spoke. "Yes, they did." But his voice was no longer light and teasing; harsh and ragged were the correct words, like he wanted to yell at Aster to leave without actually saying it.

_He's been in foster homes, too. _Aster had never really thought of that possibility. He'd assumed that Jack would have had a grand old time in the orphanage, before getting adopted by Ms. Bennett, a woman whom he felt didn't deserve this headache. With the realization that maybe Jack had met some of the worse families out there, his green eyes lost their humor as well. "Hey, mate, I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter," Jack shrugged. "Say whatever the hell you want, I'm not stopping you."

"Yeah, but I didn't mean…" Aster wasn't good with apologies and this one wasn't any different. He didn't mind the actual saying of the words, 'I'm sorry'; what he minded was what happened after. How did you apologize and remind them you were wrong after they'd told you it was okay, or, in Jack's case, that it didn't matter? "I'm sorry, I just didn't know that saying that would bother you."

"It didn't bother me," Jack snapped, instantly on the defensive. He closed his notebook with a snap, stuffing it back in his backpack. "Now, if you don't mind, I have some clearly _essential_ homework to do…"

"Right," Aster replied, standing up straight from where he leaned against the wall. "Right, I'm sorry. I…just…you do that homework, I guess?"

Jack's lips twitched, threatening a smile. He still looked depressingly faraway, but Aster felt that maybe his words had sort of reached the sixteen-year-old. "Yeah, since it's so essential. Were you even trying to make that argument believable?"

"Homework does…sort of…help," Aster admitted. "I mean, sometimes, yeah, it's completely useless, but if you ask me, some of the _classes_ are completely useless, too."

Jack nodded enthusiastically, before being struck by a sudden thought. "Are you in college?"

And Aster realized that he had never really specified anything about himself. "Uh…no."

"Oh. Do you have plans to go to college?"

"Nope." Aster shook his head. "Do you?"

Jack's response came in the form of a horrified look. "I've got two more years left, why would I go and add another four onto _that_?"

Aster chuckled lightly. "At least you understand why I didn't go."

"Did your parents do anything about it?" Jack asked. "Like, did they have a little college fund for you, and did they take it back or let you use it for something else?"

Aster hesitated on the verge of giving a defensive response. It was his natural reaction whenever anybody asked about his parents. But he managed to bite it back and give something a little more neutral. "No, they didn't."

"Isn't that what parents do, though?" Jack questioned. "Try to convince their kids to go to college and whatnot?"

As if he'd never known parents and what they were supposed to do.

"Uh…" Aster hesitated. "I…have no idea." Because he'd never known them, either.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Break of Dawn _**

**A/N: You should actually thank a guest reviewer for this chapter, not me! That reviewer got me to see how many favorites and follows I have on this, and I realized it wasn't right for me to just give up on this so quickly. So, here's the next chapter. I'm sorry if it's dumb, but I kind of like it. **

* * *

Aster had come a long way from the eighteen-year-old boy who burned everything he put in the stove. He was reasonably confident that his rather small meal of fish and chips was quite up to snuff, but Jack sort of poked at it with his fork, evidently in deep thought.

"You okay, kid?" Aster ventured quietly, unsure how to speak to a teenager, much less one like Jack Frost.

Jack nodded and then raised his head to look Aster in the eye, his blue gaze unusually serious. "Can I ask you a question?"

Unsure what to expect, Aster nodded hesitantly.

Jack leaned forward, as if this question was a matter of utmost importance, and said, "In Australia, do they really say 'g'day, mate'?" The boy put on an accent, but to Aster, it sounded more like he came from the deep South.

For a moment, Aster blinked, confused.

And then he snapped, "Why does everyone think we go around saying that?! I've never even said those words in my life!"

"Alright, calm down!" A grin tugged at Jack's lips as he regarded Aster, and his blue eyes sparkled with mirth. "You look like you're about to blow a gasket!"

"Maybe I am!" Aster snapped, aggrieved. "And I'm glad _one_ of us is seeing the humor in this!" He threw Jack a dark look to emphasize that he was definitely not that one.

There was a few moments of silence between them, and then Jack laughed. Not one of those small, awkward, crap-what-do-we-talk-about-now laughs, but a real one, one Aster had never heard before. He laughed so hard, he actually dropped his fork with a clang, and, after a few minutes, his laughter turned into wheezy gasps as he attempted to stop. "I'm…I'm sorry," he apologized quickly, wiping a tear from his eye when he noticed Aster's glare. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to laugh, it was just…your _expression_! You looked so…"

And then this set him off again.

"Yuk it up," Aster snapped, picking up his fork and returning to his meal, deeming this the best route for preserving _some_ dignity. "One day, you'll be begging me to hear all about it."

"Uh-huh." Jack wasn't as repentant as Aster would have liked, but he decided to take it, for now. At least the boy had stopped laughing, after all. "Sure."

"Hmph." Aster's grunt was quiet, but Jack still heard it.

He smiled a little to himself, taking a bite of food. Despite the fact that they'd been sitting at the table for only fifteen minutes, and he was hungry, this was the first bite he'd taken since they'd sat down. He had been too preoccupied first with his thoughts of how things at his new school were going, which was just how he had expected them to, and then had been too busy laughing at Aster's complete overreaction to a simple question. His eyes widened in surprise when he tasted the food; he would never have guessed that the twenty-year-old was that good of a cook just by looking at him. "This is good."

"You sound surprised," Aster grumped, still not quite ready to forgive that last laughing fit. "What, did you think I was going to be serving frozen TV dinners?"

"Something like that," Jack admitted. "Can't blame me, though, can you? I mean, you don't look like much of a chef to me." He took another bite.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aster demanded, raising one eyebrow.

Jack grinned and shook his head. "Nothing! Boy, you take a lot of things personally, don't you?"

"I take _insults_ personally," Aster corrected. "And you use a lot of them."

"I'm not insulting you," Jack replied. "I'm being _honest_ – I can't exactly see you wearing a bright pink apron with 'Kiss the Cook' on it, can you?"

"Not everybody who cooks wears that," Aster huffed in response. "You watch too much television, kid. First g'day mate, and now this."

* * *

Aster could hear the floor creaking above him until late into the night, the constant pounding of feet across the polished hardwood floor. He stared at the ceiling, bars of moonlight making silvery stripes across the room, and he couldn't figure out why Jack was still awake. He sat up, listening to the little _creak, creak. Creak, creak._

There was normally so much else to listen to that Aster loved about his house at night: the crickets chirping in the summer, the wolves howling in the winter. But tonight, the only thing he could hear was that incessant creaking. He needed to get up and get to the carnival tomorrow, because they'd be short a worker, but that wasn't what was bothering him. He just couldn't help but wonder what Jack was _doing_ up there. He sighed and glanced out the window at the moon, a yawn forcing his lips open. He decided he would just ask the kid what was wrong tomorrow. He didn't like feeling like he should rush upstairs and demand to know immediately. He didn't even know what the big deal was about a bit of creaking from the floorboards. When the house was empty, he always chalked it up to the fact that the house was just settling.

Something might be bothering Jack, and the thought sort of bothered him. He didn't want Ms. Bennett finding out he had done a two-star job of taking care of the kid, after all. Even so, he hadn't realized how late it had gotten until he awoke the next morning and realized he had fallen asleep, right in the middle of his thinking and worrying about Jack and the creaking and Ms. Bennett.

The floor wasn't creaking when he got up that morning and began to make breakfast. The coffeepot hummed soothingly, and the pancakes sizzling on the stove were a familiar sound for Aster's alien feeling. He heard footsteps on the stairs and he turned to greet Jack, the spatula in one hand, a plate in the other. He flicked a few pancakes onto the plate as he spoke. "Morning."

"Morning," Jack mumbled, hitching his backpack higher on his shoulder.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Fine."

"You know, I heard some noises from upstairs last night." Aster set the pancakes down in front of Jack and tossed him a stick of butter and some syrup. He thought it best to be doing something as he spoke, to make his concern appear casual. Concern, of course, for Ms. Bennett's benefit, he insisted to himself. "Were you moving around up there or something?"

Jack had been drowsily drowning his poor pancakes in syrup, but at these words, he shrugged. "Yeah, I just have trouble sleeping sometimes. Thanks for the breakfast, it was great." He shoved two huge bites in his mouth, adjusted his backpack and was out of the kitchen in the time it took Aster to hear what he had said.

"Wait, you didn't even eat," Aster protested, leaning around the sunny yellow kitchen wall to see the white-haired boy fumbling with the front door's locks.

"I'll be fine, lunch isn't far off," he shrugged, succeeding in opening the first lock and then the screen. "Bye!"

The screen swung shut behind him and Aster was left standing alone with a rapidly burning pancake.


End file.
